I had Pinchflat set up on my server and never got around to putting it back in after I nuked it. I remember organizing backed up videos in jellyfin was a mess I never quite got working as well as I’d like.
I see there’s a couple alternatives mentioned on the Pinchflat GitHub. What is everybody else using to accomplish this?
NewPipe
Just use Jdownloader to download whatever you want from the internet.
I use newpipe on phone but metube isn’t too hard to install with docker
On Android Newpipe has the best UI in my opinion.
Most kids today don’t know how to use a computer, but old farts like me use yt-dlp.
yt-dlp
Yt-dlp is what I see mostly
Make sure you update often though. Youtube/Google/Alphabet are playing whackamole.
You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the release binaries
If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program
If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program
Simply running
pip install yt-dlpdoesn’t update though, right? You need to add an upgrade flag, so either:pip install yt-dlp --upgradepip install yt-dlp -U
EDIT: Maybe I should actually read this documentation that I am commenting about. Their steps to initially install it with PIP mention to use the
-Uflag anyway. That flag is meant for updating, but it won’t make the package install wrong if used during initial installation of the package or anything, so no reason not to.I just did
uv tool install yt-dlp[default] --with mutagen. Updates are handled automatically.I put it in a container that has a build process every week.
Yt-dlp is the way. J-Downloader is okay too if you need a good interface but dlp is just too damn powerful to not use
Yup, don’t need anything else.
On Android I use Seal. Aside from an occasional hiccup it’s awesome and does a phenomenal job 99% of the time. If I ever can’t get one item to work and there’s no alternative, I use one of the ones on my Linux machine. I’ll post the name when I’m home and can check.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web Plex Brand of media server package SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
[Thread #93 for this comm, first seen 14th Feb 2026, 14:01] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
I use GUI wrappers for yt-dlp - Parabolic on Fedora GNOME and Seal on Android
As others have already said, yt-dlp is absolutely the gold standard. It even works in Termux. As for a dedicated Android app, there are apps like Seal which are effectively just wrappers for yt-dlp. Then the open source YouTube clients like Tubular, which are primarily for browsing/watching videos, have a download button on every video.
Android users can use YTDLnis for a nice GUI FE. It’s also available for install from IzzyOnDroid.
Seal is my favorite app to demonstrate the power of installing apps outside of Google Play
yt-dlp is great for cli, and if you want a web gui, you can run metube in docker
I don’t think docker is a good solution for people who need a gui
There is portainer. CLI until you install portainer then everything is GUI based.
The whole concept of running containers might be too much for most people. Ideally it would just be an app that you download.
If I wanted a web UI I would just make a script that ran yt-dlp $1 and then use php shell_exec(script URL);
Is there anything that works for Vimeo?
I’ve downloaded many videos with PipePipe on my Android.
